The first sight of the houses that are there and not thereamong the low stunted trees in spring leafin the high wild bowl of this mountain valleyin the sunlight, and behind the light.

'You can almost see them', you say, and you're right.Round stone walls, rough thatch, rising smokeskin-clad, bare-armed hunters, and the women folkas we hover in the future where they can't see usand we can't quite hear them either...and the two high waterfalls are as they weregreat white threads of lace drifting downin the same primordial silence.

And I don't know if it was findingthis gnarled distended fragile tree rootthe width of a piece of bark, forminga low triangular gate we crawled throughand under the arms of a beech belowwith a stream flung out from a hollowthat opened something, playing as we were;

but when we got down to the river's edgewhere it crosses the onward pathwe both paused, entering that silence, and our own.

A hawthorn sapling beside it, the water glitteringsmooth dry stones in a row for the crossingthree short steps to the other sideand suddenly you know as you stand therethat nothing has ever happenedall is always now, all One Daynight and day, so then is now, herethe light brightening on the side of your facewhere you lean against a boulderthe warm wind breathing on your neckand we are in the summerlandas it is in us.

Stand in the river, then, astride the stoneswhere time is standing still as its flowand cross to where the memory of the airstill spells danger: changing, hardening greythe world that is always outside, waiting

but melting here, as we may toofree of the need to meet enemies, or make themand greet each other in the One Dreamwe've all been dreaming: to live without fearentering into Creation, not as a frozen idyll,but living for the day, and at last, for each otherfor the love of the earth, where the land is summer.